Instructor: Craig
Sargent, Rooms 115-116 MDR3 (aka "Research 3"), csargent@uky.edu,
257-8742, Office Hours TBA and by Appointment
Meeting Place/Time:
Section 011, Wednesday,
11:00 am - 11:50 am, Room 108 THM
Section 012, Thursday, 11:00 am - 11:50 am, Room 108, THM
Books: Why We Get
Sick : The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, by Randolph M. Nesse, George
C. Williams, Times Books, Random House. This book can be purchased inexpensively
and easily online
(e.g. link).
Author Websites:
Randolph
Nesse, Center for Evolution and Medicine (link);
George
Williams, Profile from Science (link)
Selected Papers from the
Primary Literature:
George C. Williams; Randolph
M. Nesse (1991) The Dawn of Darwinian Medicine, Quarterly Review of
Biology, 66(1): 1-22 (link)
Course
Website:
Course Description:
Evolutionary
Medicine, or Darwinian Medicine, explores the phenomena of health and disease
from the point of view of adaptation and natural selection for both the host and
the pathogen.
There will be weekly reading
assignments, and students are responsible for writing a brief summary, one
double-spaced page in length, of each assignment. For the first 7 or 8 weeks, I will
cover background material in front of the class for about 25 minutes, which will
be followed by small group discussions and debriefing for the whole class for
the remaining 25 minutes. The remaining 7 or 8 weeks are devoted to student presentations,
where 4 students each week give one 7-minute talk. Each student's talk is
critiqued by her/his classmates from the points of view of content, craft and
presence for about 3 minutes. Each student gets to give two presentations during
the semester, so they can take their initial feedback to improve their second
talks. In addition, each student will have the
opportunity to critique the talks of
her/his classmates from each of the 3 points of view. This thoroughly engages
each student in every week of class.
Grading: Grades will
be based on attendance at all the classes (allowing for excused absences), the
one page summaries of assigned readings, active participation in each week's
discussion, and presentations.
Presentations:
Presentation
Schedule:
Weekly Readings:
Week 2: Medicine
Needs Evolution RM Nesse, SC Stearns & GS Omenn.
Week 3: Chapters 1, 2
& 3 of Nesse and Williams.
Darwin's
Natural Selection
Possible Future Topics: Antibiotic
Resistance (I fixed the broken link)
Levy, SB. 1998. The
Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance. Scientific American,
Maisnier-Patin S,
Andersson DI. Adaptation to the deleterious effects of antimicrobial
drug resistance mutations by compensatory evolution.
Res Microbiol. 2004 Jun;155(5):360-9. Review. (link)
Anthropogenic
Stress Combined with Ecological Stress. Although low doses of anthropogenic
stress may not produce detectable effects on fitness, when combined with
ecological stress, predation or parasitism, low doses of pesticides can affect
fitness.
Rick A. Relyea and Nathan
Mills. 2001. Predator-induced stress makes the pesticide carbaryl more deadly to gray treefrog tadpoles
(Hyla versicolor).
PNAS | February 27, 2001 | vol. 98 | no. 5 | 2491-2496 (link)
Joseph M. Kiesecker
2002. Synergism between trematode infection and pesticide exposure: A
link to amphibian limb deformities in nature?
PNAS | July 23, 2002 | vol. 99 | no. 15 | 9900-9904 (link)
Internet Resources:
PubMed:
UK
Library Website:
Instructions
to access journals from off campus with EZProxy (you may need to use this on
campus too, if you're on the wireless network)
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